


In These Rough Hands

by icarus_chained



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Companions, Comrades in Arms, Endurance - Freeform, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hope, Invulnerabilty, Jealousy, Pain, Prompt Fic, Rebuilding, Survival, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 18:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce & Steve, and the fear of always being the last one standing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In These Rough Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt of: "Bruce/Steve, they bond over the fact that they are jealous of those who haven't ever lost everything". I think it came out overly angsty, and even though the prompt was for slash, I think this came out ... not. *grins sheepishly*

The Avengers Tower was a strange place to be, sometimes. A futuristic castle in the clouds, an aloof view downwards towards a city made strange by the distance.

Of course, sometimes that wasn't the only reason the city seemed strange.

Bruce stood back a bit, with a cup of tea in hand and the gentle silence of a man used to making himself invisible, and scanned an eye over the drawings lying crumpled at Steve's feet. Fractured city views, caught between the present and what could only be the past, crumpled and cast aside to blur the hard lines of their desperation. He didn't intrude on them, didn't wander down to poke, to stoop down and lift them up to be studied. Didn't draw the silent frustration of them up into the light. 

Patience in the face of frustration was a long learned and hard-won skill, by now.

"It's hard, isn't it?" he asked at last, drifting gently past Steve's hunched figure to stand in front of the windows. To look down over that strange, distant city, all those strangers rushing endlessly past. Tilting his head a little, to find the change of angle not much more enlightening. He waited. He was ... very _good_ , at waiting.

"... What's hard?" Steve asked, after a long moment. Lifting his head, the pained, pensive expression visible in the glass in front of Bruce. And then, a touch of humour. "You mean drawing?"

Bruce quirked a grin at that, a little lift of a lip that was maybe part grimace. Steve caught his eye through the reflection, a knowing little turn of his own lips. Small bubbles of humour, strained against other things lurking beneath, but no less valuable for that.

"Well, that too," Bruce allowed, turning a little to smile at the man directly. "There's a reason I ended up in the sciences rather than the arts." He sighed, shaking his head slightly. "But no. I meant ... learning the new places. The new people. Trying to decide ... how much you want to risk trying to keep."

Steve blinked. Stuttered a little, going still. The carefulness of a frustration, a terror, pried up into the light. Bruce did his best to be gentle, in the face of it.

"It used to scare me sometimes," he murmured, looking back at the city to spare the man beside him. "The fact that maybe I can't ... maybe I can't die." He laughed. It wasn't a pretty sound. "It still does, if I let myself think about it too long. I put a bullet in my brain, and it got spit out. I don't even know if I'm aging properly anymore. Maybe I won't. Maybe it doesn't matter. But either way, there's ... very few things out there more durable than I am right now. There's very few things that could survive where I won't. And that ... that scares me."

Steve looked down. At his hands, at his knees. At the drawings lying at his feet, and the past they depicted that had proved so much less durable than him.

"You get used to running," Bruce said quietly. "You get used to learning enough to survive, enough to not look out of place. Just enough to look like you belong, or at least not stand out for how much you don't. And after a while, you stop trying for more than that. Because tomorrow, maybe you'll wake up on a riverbank. Or in a jungle. Or even a bed. And you won't remember what happened, not exactly. You'll just know ... that it's gone. That place. Those people. The life you had there. It's gone, and there's no going back. It's never as durable as you are. It's never strong enough to let you stay. After a while, you start to wonder if anything ever will be. Or if you'll just ... keep waking, over and over again. If you'll just keep going, until it stops mattering that you never learn enough to feel ..."

"To feel like you belong," Steve finished, almost too softly to be heard. His hands curled inwards over his knees, a slow, powerful flex, the strength of a frustration kept so carefully in check. There was ice in his eyes, and a city crumpled beneath him. "To feel like home."

Bruce closed his eyes, kept his cup of tea carefully level against his chest. "I want to shake them sometimes," he admitted, to the darkness behind his eyelids and the silence of the man behind him, gesturing out over the distant thousands going about their lives beneath them. "I want to ... to roar, to scream. To shake them, because they have _so much_ , so much that could be gone in a second, and I could take it. I wouldn't even want to. I could let go, and it would be gone, and they _don't realise_. They don't know how fragile it is. They don't know what its like to have it be gone and have to keep going, and there are times when it makes me want to _show_ them." 

He smiled, black and cracked. The Hulk stirred within him, a sleepy leviathan riding the distant wave of a hazy anger, but didn't surface. Never surfaced, not now, not until there was no other choice, or at least no better option. There was more to strength than durability. There were some things you forced yourself to keep learning. 

Not because you had any hope. But because, somewhere beneath the anger and the desperate envy, you still remembered compassion. And somehow, it still _mattered_.

"We'll be the last ones standing," he said softly, and knew when he felt the warmth of a powerful, desperate hand around his shoulder that Steve understood the quiet horror of it. "Even if we never show them. Even if we make sure they never have to know. It will still be us, in the end. Waking up. Having to learn all over again. Having to decide ... how much, this time, we'll get to keep."

There was silence, then. While Bruce's tea went steadily colder, and Steve remained a quiet warmth at his back, immovable as the Hulk and as steady as all the tests of time. And then ...

"Maybe," Steve said, very quietly. "Maybe not. There's stronger things than us, though maybe none we could afford to let win. So maybe not. But ..." 

He paused, long enough and uncomfortably enough that Bruce opened his eyes to look at him, to catch his reflection in the glass and see the careful, almost shy thing that waited there. Something more strength than durability, maybe. And, Bruce thought, with a touch of appreciation that had more to do with the constant hum of a distant anger than with the loyalty of a friend ... perhaps something more hope than compassion.

"But at least," Steve said, his smile warm and rueful on his face. "At least this time, we won't be standing alone?" He ducked his head a little bit, drifting closer behind Bruce. "I think there's a part of me that's kind of glad to know there's someone out there as tough or tougher than me. Even if it hurts them, even if I can't be glad of that. There's still a part that's glad to know ... that there's someone who might still be there, the next time I have to open my eyes. You know?"

A tiny spark of hope, a jealousy and a possessive desire to keep, even if the keeping hurt. An avarice and a desperation, to have something to hold when all else spun away from you. Not compassion, no. Not strength.

But they weren't just heroes, were they? They weren't just Avengers, weren't just the rocks and the landslides to keep a world standing. They were _people_ , too, and even before the bubbling anger of the Hulk, Bruce had known he wasn't always the best and most selfless of men.

"Yes," he said, turning to rest his forehead against Steve's, a stone-cold cup cradled oddly between them. "There is something to be said for that, alright."

It was odd, he'd always thought. Thought again, standing above a strange and distant city, too fragile and ephemeral to be held in such rough hands as theirs. It was odd, how much peace there could be in anger. 

And how much hope there could be in pain.


End file.
